DuckSouth.com

Anatidae wrote:

jmh600 wrote:Anybody get stuck in the storm? Iv never been stuck in a snow storm but I been reading up on some of these stories about being stuck on the interstate for 10-12-14 hours in Alabama and Georgia and I got to scratching my head.. if you have 4 wheel drive would you not just hit the median or shoulder and go ahead to where you were going or atleast to the nearest exit? I would guess the stories you are hearing about sitting there so long are the ones that dont have 4 wheel drive?

Not necessarily......Just having 4WD is no assurance you will avoid getting 'stuck' in a Winter storm event unless you have studs or chains.......and a winch.

There ARE certain road conditions during a rain/ice/freeze-up/snow event that 4WD's are also debilitated. 'Have seen it in SK and the Dakotas on a couple of our trips. Not a warm and fuzzy feeling.

I was in atlantes Mon - thur. finally made it out of that hell hole last night.

I have a customer that lives in Atlanta. they left there daughters school program at 4:30 tue evening. they said "we'll make it home, we have 4x4's" he said the thing about Atlanta and 4x4's is that the other 99% of the people don't have them. he said they went 2-3 miles and literally the traffic was just a dead stand still, he had both his and his wife's vehicle stuck in traffic and had been hit 2-3 times each.

they ditched the Lexus 4x4 and walked back to the school with there little girl 2 miles. in 4.5 hours they made it 2 miles!

slept at the school, and by morning the traffic had only gotten worse. they walked to a friends house, who wasn't home 3-miles away. got on his 4-wheeler and it took them 6 hours to drive it home 6-8 miles.

Saw a post where someone told northerners to think of it this way...We weren't prepared because snow storms in the south are about as rare as a northern school winning a BCS Championship. Thought that was pretty good.

crow wrote:Saw a post where someone told northerners to think of it this way...We weren't prepared because snow storms in the south are about as rare as a northern school winning a BCS Championship. Thought that was pretty good.

Ezackly! My brother in law is from Alaska and laughs about all this, but he's smart enough not to try and drive on ice either. Of course we don't have much experience driving on snow/ice - once every 2-3 years maybe for most of us. But it's fun for most of the country to ridicule the south.

I left on Tuesday to take the dog up to the vet.. The vet is only about 4 miles from here.. I was on 471 behined a big SUV when the SUV started to go sideways.. All I could do was watch in amazement as the thing went back and fourth from one side of the road to the other until they got past the ice and straightened out..

Just about the time they got straightened out, I hit the ice patch and replayed their entire situation.. Fortunately I was able to keep it between the ditches and made it to the vet.. On the way back home, road was blocked by emergency vehicles, apparently someone was not able to keep it between the ditches..

It was crazy.

People laugh at the South because two inches of snow isn't supposed to shut down ANY city, geography be damned. If I lived in Atlanta, I'd be madder at the idiots that watched this happen, assuring me that they had no idea a storm was coming, than at anybody from elsewhere in the country pointing out the ridiculousness of the whole deal. Treat the dang roads!

Even if they had treated the roads it would have only helped for a short time. The amount of ice/snow that fell would have covered the treatment.

I blame the local citizens. Every local and national news outlet tried to warn them. Everyone should have stayed home. Why were schools and businesses still open on Tuesday? They don't need the governor or mayor to tell them to close. Why were all the people in Birmingham and Atlanta still out on the highways Tuesday afternoon? Why were there thousands of 18 wheelers on the highways Tuesday? Those were personal choices that had nothing to do with the governor or mayor. A lack of common sense by thousands of individuals.

Highway departments down here are simply not equipped as well as the ones up north. It's just a $$$$ thing. They can pretreat with some form of a brine solution down here if they think it warrants it, but all that will do is give you a few more degrees before the road surface freezes. They will salt, slag, and sand bridges and overpasses and maybe some intersections after they freeze, but that's about it. They don't have money in their budgets to keep enough salt on hand, and don't have near as many plows and trucks.